Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Commanding officer and pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbits Jr. waves from the cockpit of his bomber at its base in Tinian, Aug. 6, 1945, shortly before dropping the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Tibbits named the B-29 Superfortress after his mother, "Enola Gay."

A tall column of smoke billows 20,000 feet above Hiroshima, Japan, after the first atomic bomb strike by American forces on Aug. 6, 1945. A cloud of smoke 10,000 feet in diameter covers much of the city at the base of the column. This picture was made by Bob Caron, tail gunner of the Enola Gay, the B-29 aircraft that dropped the bomb.

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Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress lands at Tinian Base after dropping the Hiroshima A-bomb. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about Japan's unconditional surrender. The war ended when the papers of surrender were accepted aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945

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This is the "Fat Man" atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

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A mushroom cloud rises 20,000 feet over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945, moments after the atomic bomb was dropped by U.S. forces.

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President Harry S. Truman smiles over a battery of microphones in Washington, D.C., August 9, 1945, following his nationwide radio report on the Potsdam conference and the war in the Pacific. Mr. Truman warned the Hiroshima attack was only the beginning of things to come unless the Japanese surrendered.

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This photo from the U.S. Signal Corps shows the devastation left after an atom bomb exploded over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945.

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This is the New York Times front page for Aug. 7, 1945, the day after the atom bomb was dropped on Hirohsima.

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An allied correspondent stands in a sea of rubble before the shell of a building that once was a movie theater in Hiroshima Sept. 8, 1945. On Aug. 6, 1945, an atomic bomb instantly destroyed almost all of the houses and buildings in Hiroshima.

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The landscape of Hiroshima, Japan, shows widespread rubble and debris in an aerial view Sept. 5, 1945, one month after the atomic bomb was dropped. The atomic blast of Aug. 6, 1945, killed an estimated 140,000 people by the end of 1945.

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A victim of the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare is seen in September 1945, at the Ujina Branch of the First Army Hospital in Hiroshima. The thermic rays emitted by the explosion burned the pattern of this woman's kimono upon her back.

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A sacred Torii Gate stands erect over the completely destroyed area of a Shinto shrine in Nagasaki, in October 1945, after the second atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the U.S. over the Japanese industrial center. Due to its structure, the blast of the explosion could go around it, therefore leaving the arch intact.

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This young man, a victim of the second atomic bomb ever used in warfare, is seen as he is lying sick on a mat, in Nagasaki, in late 1945. The bombing killed more than 70,000 people instantly, with ten of thousands dying later from effects of the radioactive fallout.

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Church services continued in the Nagarekawa Protestant Church in 1945 after the atomic bomb destroyed the church in Hiroshima.

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With the backdrop of Atomic-Bomb Dome, paper lanterns float down along Motoyasu River in Hiroshima on Sunday, Aug. 6, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the city's bombing by the United States. The lanterns are to console souls of those who were killed.

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A Japanese eldery woman prays in front of a memorial monument at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan, Wednesday morning before the start Aug. 6, 2003, of a ceremony to mark the 58th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing.